BERLIN — Europe’s
leaders portray the refugee pact they struck with Turkey last spring
as a diplomatic silver bullet that will stem the flow of refugees to
the Continent and ensure their humane treatment under Ankara’s
care.

In fact, the deal,
which Chancellor Angela Merkel personally negotiated, is starting to
look more like a ticking time bomb.

A lack of political
will in both Europe and Turkey to implement the pact’s key
provisions has proved to be its Achilles’ heel. And if leaders
don’t change course soon, the consequences will be felt from Ankara
to Berlin, critics warn.

“A failure of the
deal would have serious consequences for Greece and would be a
problem for the Western Balkans,” said Gerald Knaus, director of
the European Stability Initiative think tank and a primary architect
of the refugee strategy. “But it would also be a problem for
Merkel, the Dutch and others who face election campaigns next year.”

Knaus published a
scathing report on the EU’s implementation of the plan last week,
concluding “the current effort falls dramatically short.” If
Europe doesn’t act, the Aegean islands could become a “European
Nauru,” he warns, a reference the poverty-stricken Pacific island
where Australia deposits migrants.

Under the Turkey
deal, the pace at which Greece handles asylum cases was supposed to
accelerate. Instead, it has slowed.

So far, European
officials refuse to even acknowledge that there’s much of a
problem. They point to Turkey’s efforts to patrol its borders,
which have led to a dramatic drop in the number of new arrivals in
Greece, from nearly 2,000 migrants per day in January to about 130
per day so far this month. The Commission announced this week that it
had allocated billions to help refugees in Turkey, a crucial part of
the plan.

“The EU-Turkey
[pact] has led to concrete positive results,” European Commissioner
for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos said recently. “The success of
our common approach over the last months is essential for the success
of everything else.”

Yet the positive
news belies serious cracks in the deal that its architects warn could
trigger its collapse. Instead of ensuring the seamless transfer of
migrants arriving in Greece back to Turkey — a key aspect of the
plan — the deal has resulted in the backup of thousands of refugees
on the Greek islands, where most live in overcrowded camps, often in
squalid conditions.

And while the number
of new arrivals has fallen compared to the beginning of the year, the
monthly average has nearly tripled since May.

Greek woes

The problems in
Greece are manifold. To begin, Greece lacks the institutional
framework to deal with the influx. Under the Turkey deal, the pace at
which Greece handles asylum cases was supposed to accelerate.
Instead, it has slowed. Before the deal, the Greek appeals panel that
deals with asylum cases handled an average of 80 cases per month. In
September, it dealt with just 35 such cases, despite a growing
backlog.

The problem,
migration experts say, is that Greece is simply not equipped to deal
with the mountain of cases it faces. Europe pledged to help but has
sent only about 40 asylum experts to assist so far.

There are currently
more than 14,000 migrants and asylum seekers on Greece’s Aegean
islands and tens of thousands more on the mainland.

Under the terms of
the EU-Turkey pact, Greece has the right to send back Syrians and
other migrants who arrive from Turkey, once they’ve been registered
and given an asylum hearing if they seek one.

For every Syrian
refugee it takes back, Ankara has the right to send a Syrian refugee
already in Turkey to Europe. Europe hoped that forcing refugees back
to Turkey would dissuade them from crossing the Aegean, while also
disrupting the human-smuggling trade.

So far, Greece has
only sent back about 600 of the more than 14,000 migrants who arrived
in the first six months of the deal. Most, if not all of the
returnees, went voluntarily. That’s hardly the kind of deterrent,
asylum experts say is necessary to keep refugees from making the trek
to Europe.

“We’ve bought
ourselves six months time and the numbers have fallen. But what
really keeps people from coming is not fear of risking their lives,
but a sense that it’s hopeless to come,” Knaus said. “That’s
when the number of arrivals drops dramatically.”

The main difficulty
in implementing this aspect of the plan has been that Greek asylum
officials have refused to send the refugees back to Turkey. Under
international agreements, refugees can only be sent to countries
deemed safe. Though the Greek parliament has designated Turkey a
“safe third country,” the asylum officials conducting the
hearings typically take a different view, one that is more consistent
with the appraisal of human rights advocates. Groups such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch regularly report on abuses in
Turkey of minorities and the political opposition, factors that many
argue make the country unsuitable for refugees.

The situation on the
islands is becoming increasingly dire as asylum seekers are forced to
wait months just to register.

In the European
Commission’s September report on the state of the agreement, it
reported that of the thousands of refugees who had arrived on the
Greek islands since the agreement took effect, Greek officials had so
far only agreed that six Syrian refugees could be returned to Turkey
after reviewing their asylum petitions.

The situation on the
islands, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly dire as asylum seekers
are forced to wait months just to register. On Lesvos, the island
with the largest number of migrants, a fire recently destroyed much
of the Moria camp after angry migrants set it on fire.

To defuse the
tension, Greek officials may be forced to relocate many of the
migrants to the mainland. But that’s just what Germany and other
northern countries don’t want. The point of keeping the migrants on
the islands and returning them to Turkey quickly was to send a signal
to other potential asylum seekers not to come. The longer migrants
stay, the less likely it is they will ever return home. Europe
currently only returns about 30 percent of the migrants who enter the
EU illegally, according to Commission statistics.

Strained borders

Another concern is
that once refugees reach the mainland they will head north, testing
borders along the so-called Balkan route. Other EU countries pledged
to take many of Greece’s roughly 50,000 refugees, but so far only
about 4,500 have been relocated.

Though the borders
along the Balkan route have been sealed, as countries from Macedonia
to Slovenia erected stronger border controls, it’s far from clear
they would withstand another major influx.

Serbia, for example,
already faces a growing crisis on its border with Hungary, where
thousands of refugees trying to reach northern Europe have set up
makeshift camps.

Asylum experts say
the deal can’t be fully implemented until Turkey improves its human
rights record, a tall order. Knaus says Europe should engage Ankara
more seriously and use the promise of visa liberalization for Turks
as leverage to win concessions.

While the EU
promised Turkey the visa waiver as part of the original agreement —
once Ankara fulfills the conditions — it remains controversial in
many countries. In Germany and Austria, for example, populist parties
warn that the visa waiver could spark an exodus of Kurds and other
Turks facing persecution at home. Mainstream politicians worry about
the optics of cutting a deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan just as he has become more authoritarian.

“Europeans often
debate this subject on an emotional level without considering what
the next step will be,” Knaus said. ” [European Parliament
President] Martin Schulz can say there won’t be visa liberalization
for Turks, but we still need Turkey to keep the crisis from breaking
out again in the Aegean.”

Another question is
whether Turkey will play along. Erdoğan is keen to keep the deal
alive, in part to maintain good relations with Europe, which have
been strained of late.

For now, Europe’s
attention appears to be focused on Brexit and other issues. The
strains on the Turkey deal have largely gone unnoticed, as have the
ramifications of its collapse.

Back in March, when
the deal was agreed, leaders were desperate to show tangible progress
in stemming the flow of refugees by securing a deal. Making it work
over the long term has been less of a priority, analysts say.

“As soon as the
message worked, the interest in its actual implementation dropped
significantly,” said Elizabeth Collett, director of Brussels-based
think tank Migration Policy Institute Europe. “Everyone who
understands how these things work knows that it would have taken a
lot of time to put into practice.”